Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams discuss 'Blue Valentine'

Gosling, Williams get to guts of latest film

Published 12:00 am, Thursday, January 27, 2011

"Why do they call this an 'anti-love story'?" Ryan Gosling asks with affable insistence, as co-star Michelle Williams listens for an answer: "I've heard that a lot, an 'anti-love story.' Why is that?"

The interviewer, while declining to agree with that characterization, offers that the film in question, "Blue Valentine," depicts the end of a relationship.

"Well, who says it's the end? One of them's not dead," says Gosling, offering a rather sunny -- or partly cloudy -- view of a bleak film. "They have a bad two days and the relationship continues. It may continue in a different way. It's always going to evolve; they have a kid together. But these are two people in the trenches and they're slugging it out."

Some might find the bruising, sexually frank film tough to watch. Primarily because of an explicit, emotionally fraught sex scene as the couple disintegrates, the movie was initially facing the dreaded NC-17 rating; the Motion Picture Association of America relented on appeal, deciding the truthful but painful moment was no worse after all than the festival of mutilation that is the "Saw" franchise. But Gosling is right to use "slugging" -- the nonviolent "Blue Valentine" is much more likely to deliver a gut punch to viewers than the torture porn that shares its R rating.

"I think it's a confronting film," he says. "People personalize it when they watch it. I think that means it's resonating."

It is a relief to see Gosling young and handsome again after the toll taken on his "Blue Valentine" character, Dean. Dean goes from the very spring of possibility to the autumn of compromise and receding hairline in just a few years. In person, Gosling looks like a 1920s moving-pictures star playing a heroic aviator. He seems to be imagining a private joke (he often seems so) as he closes the window against the cold and fetches a blanket from the Four Seasons suite's bedroom to lay upon his leading lady.

Williams, dressed in picnicky blue -- it's the crack of December, and uncharacteristically feels so in Los Angeles -- is grateful for the warmth ("I'm always cold ... whoo, this is really nice"). Gosling plops on the couch beside her and throws his long legs and booted feet over her lap. Perhaps this is a fair price for the blanket.

"Blue Valentine" captures in candid snapshots two stages of Dean and Cindy's (Williams') relationship: Its passionate construction, over months, and intercut with this, its implosion years later, over about two days.

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"To me, this film is about erosion and the passage of time," says Gosling. "Time can make a mountain into a rock. And that's what happens to these people and their love. In general, it seems like that's what (director and co-writer Derek Cianfrance) was trying to capture."

After some bantering about the film's perhaps bleak box-office prospects, which Gosling insists should be as bright as those of "Avatar," he addresses the question of why he took such an unglamorous, trying, sometimes ugly job, which has paid off with Golden Globe nominations for Williams and him.

"On a certain level, I don't know why," he says. "I'm just compelled to do this for some reason. And the not knowing is part of what keeps it interesting to me. I find myself in a motel room (as Dean), behaving this way that is at least uncomfortable and wildly unflattering, and yet I'm compelled to do it.

"On a more practical level, I think the movie has guts. So does Derek. He wanted to make a movie about the very thing that most movies try and get past because it's uncomfortable. And it is uncomfortable to go through it and uncomfortable to watch. That's not the best sales pitch for the film, but I think it's the truth -- it's romantic because it doesn't try to romanticize it. It looks at what it's really like. If you're going to accept somebody and say you love them, you have to accept all the ugly parts of them too, including yourself. We can do it with kids, but we can't do it with ourselves or with each other."

From beneath her blanket, Williams chimes in.

"I think my answer's the same: I don't have a choice. I don't have a choice," she repeats. "I read something and inside, I've already made the decision. But not with my head. It's like something that my heart yearns for and my mind has to catch up and deal with the fact that I'm going to have to expose things that are uncomfortable and be in positions that are vulnerable or uproot my life, but the decision is already made. The only thing I'm ever looking for is like a hit, an instantaneous feeling somewhere in my body, somewhere between my stomach and my heart."

"Your solar plexus," interjects Gosling, deadpan.

More Information

At a glance

"Blue Valentine"

Director: Derek Cianfrance

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Michelle Wililams

Opens: Friday at the Spectrum 8 Theatres in Albany

"Yeah," she says with a laugh, "I've found the decisions I've (subjected to) weighing, bouncing, asking friends, calling on professionals, throwing the I Ching (laughs) are always the wrong decisions. I've been asking myself a lot recently because every job I've been doing, I find myself saying the same thing: 'It's so hard.' And I don't know if I'm having 'fun.' But after saying that, I realize over and over again that I do take a kind of pleasure in it. I think when I respond to material it's because it's above me. It's smarter than I am. It's talking about things I haven't kind of figured out and that's why I want to go towards it, because it holds my attention for long enough. It's the distance that I have to cross between myself and the character, to something I don't understand, and I'm working through that constantly."

Gosling adds, " 'Blue Valentine' is the kind of movie that if you saw, it might prevent you from going down that road. If you give yourself to it, you could leave the film and be like, 'OK, I don't want to do that, I don't want to do this,' you could act differently in your relationship. It has the ability to do that if you let it."